There’s an awful lot of pressure on a site address to perform. Your site’s address, or domain name, needs to attract search engines and human users, needs to be easy to type in, needs to convey something about the personality of your business and needs to be memorable. It has to satisfy a lot more requirements than your real-world address does, and it’s much harder for people to just stumble across.

A site address is such an important factor in search engine optimisation that it’s a good idea to consult your SEO professional before choosing. You can talk to us at SEO Consult if you’re at this stage of site design.

You have many options when it comes to choosing your site address. You can try for an industry keyword, although in many industries these domains are all taken. You can work keywords into your brand. You can also come up with something completely different and turn your brand into a keyword in itself – Google is a great example of this. Regardless of which path you take, there are five things you need to consider:

1. SEO advantages. Keywords in your site address are of value to your site’s SEO. Search engines are known to be friendlier towards site addresses with keywords.

2. Ability to use as anchors. Inbound links make up the majority of off-page SEO work. A lot of the time, you will not have control over how those inbound links appear. Usually, webmasters simply use the site’s address as the link anchor text, so that users know exactly where they’re going when they click. With an optimised address, you’re ahead of the game.

3. Representation of your brand. A string of keywords can only say so much about your business. If you are unable to get an exact match domain name, stringing together your keywords can seem like the second best option. Having your brand represented is of some worth when choosing a domain name. You will have chosen your brand name with an eye to attracting and impressing your target users. Don’t completely throw that away in your site name.

4. The possibility of direct traffic. The ease with which internet users can type in your address will make a big difference on the amount of direct traffic you receive. This is the main reason exact-match domains, those domains that are just a simple keyword like ‘internet.com’, are so valuable. These sites get traffic when any internet user uses the browser bar instead of the search bar when typing in keywords. Any site can get direct traffic, however, so it’s important to make your site as ‘typeable’ as possible.

5. Sell-on value. This is something rarely considered when choosing a domain name, but it is a factor. If you manage to get your hands on an exact match domain, you’ll be able to sell it on. If you manage to build up your site, you may be able to sell on the domain at some stage. This might make a business think twice about selecting a ‘business.com’ name.

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